An ongoing blog to discuss the challenges facing early stage companies in Sales, Marketing and Business Development.
Visit us at www.etaconsults.com and follow on Twitter @etaconsults

October 2013

October 20, 2013

Understanding the how the culture of your workplace is impacting your business is one of the most underestimated; yet, important aspects of running a business. Whether it is an emerging company or a long time existing business, managing this part of your ever changing landscape can prove to have positive impact on your growth while ignoring it can lead to employee dissatisfaction and employee turnover.

Years ago I joined an emerging company who was just beginning their upward growth mode. Having begun the process of landing new customers outside of the "early adopter's the company began to hire more people to handle the new business and the associated needs. Yet, there were senior people who were outwardly difficult to all the new hires and verbalized their feelings by expressing themselves. As an example, I was once scolded for not have endured the struggles of the business when getting payroll for that week was at risk. Seriously. a senior executive said to me, "you weren't here when we would sweat out getting paid that week, so you don't understand." I was shocked she would have said this to me and she was factually correct, I wasn't there then. But it wasn't my fault as I had recently been hired and was not part of that founding group. This was something I couldn't change.

Culture impacts how people work. The level of trust they have in their companies to perform, speak up at meetings, interact with other employees and share ideas. A strong culture can help a company seek new heights, but be ware of the pitfalls associated with how your company handles new people. Like any living organism a company will morph and change as it evolves, and new employees will be part of that growth.

Here are some tips to follow to help you understand hidden elements about your company's culture:

Understand how your company's "underground" organization chart works. Are existing employees navigating process differently than new employees? Are new employees being asked to do things that long termers aren't?

Is the history of your company so strong that it's not allowing itself to see the future? Does the company romanticize the "good old days" or does it think ahead?

Are new ideas truly embraced or are they just "heard" in meetings to allow people to feel part of the team? Failure to impliment diminishes the value people feel they are contributing and can lead to churn.

Have employee cliques developed? While this isn't high school, companies can certainly behave like that sometimes. Are there insiders and everyone else? Think about how that impacts the group.

Are new managers truly empowerd to run their teams or are long term employees able to circumvent them and bypass process to access other long term managers?

This includes allowing them to complain and undermine the newcomers and not respect the company's stated workflow processes and management heiarchy.

There is no doubt that the culture of a thriving successful company can have a huge impact on the success of the business; as much as a debilitating unwelcoming culture can impact it negatively. A good statistical place to review whether or not culture is impacting your business is the raw data on employee churn. If you're exceeding industry norms you may have a bigger cultural problem than just hiring the wrong people to begin with.